It's Time To Admit The Marvel Cinematic Universe Will Never Really Connect Via TV

Paul Tassi
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Photo: ABC

While Marvel is still king of the comic book universe, it’s been a rather strange year for them. That’s sort of a pun intended, as we are indeed about to meet Doctor Strange for the first time, a hero known to many comic fans, but hardly an icon like Thor, Iron Man or Captain America. That’s worked before, as with Guardians of the Galaxy, but it’s far from a guarantee. The movies are also circling around the grand conflict that’s been built for years now, a showdown with Thanos in a two-part Avengers extravaganza set to kick off in 2018.

And then there’s Marvel TV.

Since the beginning, the premise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was that not only would it connect its films to one another, but it would do the same with its TV shows, creating this giant bubble of a universe that all fed into itself. That started with Agents of SHIELD and that paved the way for Agent Carter. Then came the Netflix quartet of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and now a Punisher series for good measure.

But over time, the way Marvel has treated and “integrated” its TV shows has been nothing short of bizarre, and it’s only getting stranger over time.

For a year, this worked very, very well.

That would be season one of Agents of SHIELD, which not only utilized a beloved character directly from the movies (Phil Coulson), but also let Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury guest star a few times. Its storyline was built specifically around the catastrophic event in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that was going on at the same time, the revelation of SHIELD as a basket full of HYDRA snakes. We saw that play out on a larger scale in Captain America: Winter Soldier, but it was actually more devastating on Agents of SHIELD, where the team we’d followed all season was ripped apart by chaos and one very specific, memorable betrayal.

Photo: ABC

And yet, after that, SHIELD grew increasingly isolated from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It no longer built entire seasons around events in the movie MCU. Its guest stars were scaled way back, having access to only say, Maria Hill for two minutes, or the fifth most important character in Thor, Lady Sif, for an episode or two.

This isn’t to say SHIELD became bad. While I don’t think it will ever top season one, it did a hell of a lot with what it had access to, but the problem was, that wasn’t much. The show spent a long time with a grand Inhumans plotline, but the scale of it was so large (people all over the world suddenly awaken with dormant superpowers) that for it to not make its way into the larger MCU makes almost no sense. And to add insult to injury, Marvel actually announced a separate Inhumans movie for 2019, but made no mention that SHIELD, who had built the foundation of the concept, would have anything to do with it (it’s since been taken off the schedule).

Now, SHIELD is getting even weirder, as the show has been handed Ghost Rider, a Marvel hero forgotten since Nic Cage donned the mantle, who is not Inhuman, but is leading some new turn where SHIELD will start to dive into the supernatural, possibly building to some sort of weak connection to Doctor Strange. Also, SHIELD is now bending over backward to not connect itself to the MCU in many ways, like how Phil Coulson turns down the opportunity to once again become the public face of SHIELD for no reason other than it would force Marvel to consider a (much-needed) scene where his old pals the Avengers realize the man they were trying to avenge has actually been alive this whole time.

SHIELD’s ratings are dropping, and last week’s episode was a series low by a wide margin. I really respect what the show has been able to do within all of Marvel’s limits, but I don’t know why it had to be this way. It seems insane that after four years of existence, it still has to work with only crumbs. While I know the Avengers are made up of A-list movie stars, after all this time, one couldn’t be bothered to show up for what would be considered a true television event? Captain America joins forces with Coulson to put down the remnants of HYDRA. Thor teams up with Daisy to take out some rogue Inhumans. But no, there’s nothing, not ever.

Photo: Disney

If it’s possible to be even more disconnected from the rest of the MCU than SHIELD, we have Marvel’s Netflix shows, which so far are two seasons of Daredevil, and one season of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. While again, these shows have done really well with the material they’ve been given, trying to pretend that they exist in the same universe with all these other shows and movies has been a stretch. And past that, they rarely even seem to connect with one another, despite an inevitable team-up on the horizon.

The Netflix MCU does not seem to take place in a New York City that was recently devastated by an alien attack. Yes, “The Incident” is mentioned periodically (though it’s sometimes unclear if it’s the invasion or the Sokovia disaster), but boy, do Hell’s Kitchen and Harlem really not seem to have been influenced by the widespread destruction that rained down on the city just a few years ago.

Past that, all I kept thinking when I was watching Luke Cage was why SHIELD wasn’t showing up to at least question him. This is right when Inhumans are awakening all over the world, and a man has publicly revealed himself to be an indestructible superhero in Harlem. No visit from Phil or Daisy? Not even for a single scene?

And then there’s the shows connecting themselves to one another, which they seem to want to do only through the vehicle of Rosario Dawson’s Claire, a nurse who has appeared in Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage with some regularity. Luke Cage did have a prominent supporting role in Jessica Jones for at least a handful of episodes, but past that? These shows have been incredibly reluctant to cross over with one another. The Netflix shows are the greatest offenders of waving away everything else around them, constantly referring to “the big green guy,” “the dude with the hammer” or “the guy in the mask,” who I assume is Daredevil, but no one will even speak his damn name, even in his own sister shows. In this case, yes, the Defenders will have to come together at some point to fight the recently cast Sigourney Weaver, but again, it’s been strange to see them this separate not just from the MCU, but each other across four total seasons now. It’s quite the burden to put on Rosario Dawson alone.

Photo: Netflix

I understand the fundamental principle of this, the idea that like comic books, these are different corners of the same universe, and they don’t have to crossover often as a result. But there’s a difference between making connections when they count, and abandoning the idea of a universe that’s even remotely connected, which is what we’re approaching now. Guest stars are almost non-existent. World-changing plotlines have no effect anywhere else but on one show’s tiny pond. It’s enough to make you wonder why they bother at all.

For all its many faults, I think DC is starting to do this better than Marvel with its separate movie and TV universes. This isn’t to say the films and shows are better, but the format might be. The movies are now on a clear trajectory to unite the JLA, love them or hate them. The shows are almost entirely made up of the CW Arrowverse, which now includes Supergirl, Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow, with Gotham being the only outlier (for now). Separating the two means that characters are allowed to exist in both shows simultaneously like The Flash and now even Superman, who has shown up in Supergirl for the first time this year with an un-Snyder-like smile on his face.

And these shows are connected. Truly, connected. The Flash was spun-out of Arrow, and then had a big crossover event its first season. Then Legends of Tomorrow was spun out of them both, and had a big three-way crossover. This year, Supergirl will join the party and all four shows will meet up in a single week. And outside of this, the shows connect in minor ways frequently, with Barry zipping over to talk with Felicity, or across dimensions to meet Supergirl. Perhaps the best example of this was last week when the Legends of Tomorrow premiere opened with Arrow’s Oliver Queen hearing a story from Legends’ Mick Rory (who used to be a Flash villain) telling a story about the Legends going back in time to chase Damien Darhk (an Arrow villain) who it’s then revealed is actually working to disrupt history with the help of Eobard Thawne (a Flash villain). To me, this is how a “connected” universe should operate.

Photo: CW

Maybe it’s fine, as outside of SHIELD, most Marvel properties are continuing to thrive, but I guess it’s time to give up the idea that these shows are really ever going to be significantly connected to one another or the larger cinematic universe. Marvel has had years to try and make that aspect of the universe work, but because of this weird disconnect with TV, it’s like they’ve hardly even tried.